This page features brief excerpts of stories published by the mainstream
media and, less frequently, blogs, alternative media, and even obviously
biased sources. The excerpts are taken directly from the websites cited in
each source note. Quotation marks are not used.
Source: NYT
Aug 7, 2013
In 1941, Orson Welles made his debut as a feature film director with “Citizen Kane,” a fact well known to everyone who has ever taken Film 101.Less well known is that “Kane” wasn’t Welles’s debut as a filmmaker. That distinction belongs to “Hearts of Age,” an eight-minute parody of an avant-garde allegory that Welles, as the world’s most precocious teenager, codirected with a friend, William Vance, at the Todd School for Boys in Woodstock, Ill. Amazingly, that 1934 effort, in which Welles wears old-age makeup that anticipates the elderly Kane, has survived, and can even be seen on YouTube.But neither was “Kane” Welles’s first professional encounter with the cinema. That happened three years before his Hollywood debut, in the form of about 40 minutes of footage intended to be shown with “Too Much Johnson,” a revival of an 1894 farce that Welles intended to bring to Broadway for the 1938 season of his Mercury Theater.
Source: The Scotsman (UK)
Aug 7, 2013
THE impact of the Great Fire of Edinburgh in 1824 helped to change the face of firefighting forever. It heralded a new era as Scotland’s capital led the way by launching the world’s very first municipal fire service.Edinburgh has been no stranger to devastating blazes throughout its history. The overcrowded and tightly-packed tenements of the Old Town were at constant risk. There is, however, one year in the city’s history which is more intensely associated with such incidents than any other. The unprecedented number of large fires which took place during 1824 threatened to destroy Scotland’s capital and led many citizens to believe that God was out to punish them. The most terrible of these fires ignited on the evening of November 15....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 7, 2013
Brompton Road tube station is one of London’s abandoned underground stations which went on to play a critical role in the Second World War as the command bunker for the capital’s anti-aircraft defences.Now the ghost tube station is being sold off after decades in the hands of the Ministry of Defence.Situated in the heart of Kensington, a short walk from Harrods, the building and its tunnels beneath are expected to fetch more than £20 million when they go on the market next month.“It will need quite a bit of work. There’s no power and there’s been no one down here full time for 60 years,” said Julian Chafer, an MoD property surveyor, as he showed the Telegraph through the abandoned tunnels and lift shafts....
Source: The Scotsman (UK)
Aug 7, 2013
An intricately-inscribed stone was discovered by excited archaeologists at the Ness of Brodgar on Wednesday.Nick Card, the excavation team director at the dig – which lies in the heart of Neolithic Orkney, between the Ring of Brodgar and the Stones of Strenness – said the latest find had created a “huge buzz” on the site.The stone is unusual as it is artistically decorated on both sides and has impressive deep incisions.Mr Card, of the Orkney Research Centre for Archaeology and based at the University of the Highlands and Islands in the islands, said: “It is perhaps the finest piece of art we have recovered from the site, and one of the finest from the UK ever – amazing and awe-inspiring.”...
Source: The Scotsman (UK)
Aug 7, 2013
A PLANNED housing development on the site of a 17th-century battlefield is an “insult” to the soldiers who lost their lives there, critics have said. Cala Homes wants to move a war memorial and build a multi-million-pound estate on Covenanters’ Field in Bothwell, Lanarkshire. There are plans for 15 homes on the site of the 1679 Battle of Bothwell Bridge.But the move has drawn fierce protests from objectors, who claim it would be an “act of desecration” at an important historic site.Ten objections have been lodged so far, with some from as far afield as the United States....
Source: National Post (Canada)
Aug 6, 2013
Art Burton listened intently as the old man on the other end of the phone cleared his throat and began telling him a story. Burton had only been researching the life of Bass Reeves for a short while but that afternoon what Reverend Haskell James Shoeboot, the 98-year-old part-Cherokee Indian, was about to tell him would persuade Burton he had stumbled upon one of the greatest stories never told.Born in 1838, Bass Reeves was a former slave-turned-lawman who served with the U.S. Marshals Service for 32 years at the turn of the 20th century in part of eastern Oklahoma and western Arkansas known as Indian Territory. Though he was illiterate, Reeves became an expert tracker and detective – a man who, in Burton’s words, “walked in the valley of death every day for 35 years and brought in some of the worst outlaws from that period”....It reaffirmed what Burton had suspected: that (Armie Hammer’s caucasian portrayal aside in the movie The Lone Ranger) Bass Reeves — perhaps the first black commissioned deputy marshal west of the Mississippi — could well have been one of the greatest lawmen of the Wild West. But most people hadn’t heard of him. Over the next 20 years, Reeves would become an obsession for Burton, culminating in a very interesting hypothesis, which he puts forward in his book Black Gun, Silver Star....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 6, 2013
Second World War bomber veterans are calling for the Bomber Command clasp to be extended to dozens of surviving aircrew who risked their lives on raids in the Mediterranean, Middle East and Far East.After years of campaigning by veterans, the Government announced in February that the Bomber Command Clasp would be awarded to aircrew in recognition of their bravery and service.But aircrew who undertook perilous bombing raids over Italy, Africa, the Middle East and the Far East have been told they are not eligible for the new award, which only applies to those who flew with Bomber Command over Western Europe.The Bomber Command Association has now backed the veterans and an MP is calling for the Ministry of Defence to reconsider the qualifying rules for the decoration....
Source: Guardian (UK)
Aug 6, 2013
Bobbing on the port captain's launch off the coast of Gibraltar on Tuesday there was no evidence of how this calm stretch of sea could have caused such an international storm. A handful of craft fishermen cast their nets, seemingly oblivious to the fact that 10 metres below their dinghies lay the unlikely catalyst for a political row that has embroiled David Cameron in the UK's bitterest battle with Spain over "the Rock" since Franco.Here, late last month, Gibraltar dumped an artificial reef on a fishing ground favoured by Spanish scallop dredgers. Now the ripples from those dozens of concrete blocks are rocking a 300 year old British enclave that for some is an emblematic imperial redoubt and for others an awkward colonial hangover.On Tuesday Gibraltar said it was preparing for legal action against Madrid over its retaliation for the reef, which has taken the form of a frontier control go-slow that has caused residents to queue for up to six hours in scorching summer temperatures. Gibraltar has accused Spain of inhumane behaviour and is gathering evidence that could be used at the European Court of Human Rights....
Source: Sydney Morning Herald
Aug 5, 2013
Forty years ago an ambitious bunch of men from seven different countries took on a challenge deemed impossible. To sail three wooden rafts across 14,000 kilometres from Ecuador to Australia. Expedition Las Balsas. They wanted to prove that in ancient times hundreds, if not thousands, of indigenous people from South America could have navigated across the Pacific and made a life over here.In 1973, with only stars to guide them, expedition leader Vital Alsar set off with 11 men, three monkeys and three kittens from the port of Guayaquil. Before reaching the ocean, he answered his critics."If you want to do something extraordinary, something different, you must put all your heart into it. I am not afraid of critics or people who say that what I am doing is impossible. We are doing something that everyone would like to do. That is the biggest satisfaction in the world. To have an idea and turn it into reality"....
Source: NYT
Aug 5, 2013
It has been nearly two decades since General Motors introduced OnStar. Since then, it has served as electronic emergency nurse, computerized auto theft detective and binary butler for millions of motorists. Sure, it’s had its problems – as when G.M. decided to make the switch to digital in 2008 and told all the analog customers their equipment would no longer work. But for the most part, it has been a functional system. It must be; OnStar has already cycled through nearly a dozen hardware and software updates over the years.But the idea isn’t even 20 years new. Bet you thought it was, but it isn’t. It existed, floating in the ether, somewhere between press release and reality, for at least 30 years before G.M. released OnStar for real in 1996. According to an old press release from 1966, it was called Driver Aid, Information and Routing system, and was promoted by G.M. as a revolutionary concert of existing technology....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 4, 2013
Hundreds new memorials honouring those awarded the Victoria Cross during the First World War are to be created to mark the conflict’s centenary.Commemorative paving stones will be laid in the home towns of the 480 British-born VC recipients, under plans announced by the Government on Sunday, 99 years to the day since the war broke out.The scheme to celebrate the winners of Britain’s highest award for battlefield valour will be a centrepiece of the events being planned from 2014 to 2018 to mark the conflict 100 years on.Ministers have also unveiled plans to provide extra help to people wanting to renovate previously neglected war memorials, in what is significant step forward for The Sunday Telegraph’s Lest We Forget campaign....
Source: Telegraph (UK)
Aug 4, 2013
It has all the ingredients of a romantic bestseller: a prince and a princess are desperately in love but, forbidden from marrying, they beg the Queen and the Pope for help.It even boasts a tragic ending, as the young prince dies shortly after becoming engaged to another woman, while his fiancée is comforted by his heartbroken family.In fact it is the true story of how Prince Albert, Duke of Clarence and Avondale and grandson of Queen Victoria, wooed Princess Hélène of Orléans, whose father was a pretender to the French throne.The couple’s intimate correspondence has now come to light, showing for the first time the details of an affair which at the time came close to causing a constitutional crisis. Prince Albert considered renouncing his right to accede to the throne to marry Hélène, who was forbidden from joining the Royal family because she was a Roman Catholic....
Source: BBC News
Aug 4, 2013
Wearing a military beret, medals and walking with a stick, 90-year-old Samuel Willenberg led a crowd of people through a clearing in the pine forest, stopping sporadically to point out: "And the platform was here, the trains stopped here."Nothing remains of Treblinka extermination camp apart from the ashes of the estimated 870,000 mostly Jewish men, women and children that the Nazis gassed and buried underground.On a bright summer's day, with storks nesting nearby, it is hard to imagine the horror that occurred here.Samuel Willenberg is the last survivor of the Jewish prisoners' revolt in the camp and he had returned for the 70th anniversary....
Source: Toronto Globe and Mail
Aug 4, 2013
The August civic holiday is a mess.Most provinces celebrate the first Monday in August as a holiday, whether mandatory or optional for employers, but the names are all over the map. It’s Natal Day in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island, British Columbia Day in British Columbia and Heritage Day in Alberta....But let’s not be naive. Getting a statutory holiday named after you is not easy, and keeping it is even harder.Queen Elizabeth II was born on April 21, but Canada’s official recognition of her birthday falls in late May on a day named after her great-great-grandmother, Queen Victoria. Victoria Day retained that name in Canada after the queen’s death in 1901, even as the rest of the Commonwealth went with Empire Day. Similarly, Beatrix of the Netherlands, who abdicated earlier this year, was born on Jan. 31, but her holiday was held on April 30, the birth date of former queen Juliana....
Source: The Independent (UK)
Aug 4, 2013
The Eiffel Tower has a new rival, five centuries old.For the first time since it was built in the early 1500s, the Tour Saint Jacques, a mysterious stand-alone Gothic tower in the geometric centre of Paris, is opening to the public this summer.The 170ft-high tower, long surrounded by myths and legends, has literary connections ranging from Alexandre Dumas to Marcel Proust. It was used by the writer and scientist Blaise Pascal to experiment with atmospheric pressure and weights a century before Isaac Newton developed his theory of gravity....
Source: AFP
Aug 3, 2013
REAL DE CATORCE, MEXICO – Gisele Beker, a 26-year-old Argentine, trudged for hours in scorching sun to the sprawling Wirikuta desert craving peyote, the hallucinogenic cactus that Mexicans deem sacred.Joined by three Mexican friends, Beker was living her dream as part of a new wave of tourists taking a trip for a trip — in this case to see where Lophophora williamsii takes her.“Did you strike gold yet?” she asked her Mexican friends anxiously after a 700-km trip as they searched the desert floor for the small, spineless cactus full of psychoactive alkaloids, particularly mescaline.The drug is technically illegal, but for centuries it has played a role in indigenous culture in northern Mexico and Texas, where it is part of transcendence and meditation for cultures such as the Wixarika, or Huicholes in Spanish — so much so that this remote corner of San Luis Potosi state has become a bit of a promised land for those who have trekked here to try peyote, despite the logistic challenges, since the 1960s....
Source: Denver Post
Aug 3, 2013
Denver's city of the dead is very much alive.Like Mark Twain, Riverside Cemetery has had its premature demise reported more than once. The city's premiere burial ground opened on July 1, 1876, at 5201 Brighton Blvd. on the Denver/Adams county line.In 1901, historian Jerome Smiley gushed, "(Riverside) is a most beautiful city of the dead, adorned with shrubbery and lawns and costly monuments, so that one feels in the midst of it all, that rivers of human love and devotion flow up and down all its walks and drives."...
Source: The Spectator (UK)
Aug 3, 2013
These days there are sophisticated and scientific solutions to the dismal problem of unwanted childlessness — there are IVF, Viagra and well-established egg and sperm donor services. We think of these as recent advantages and give thanks for the modern age.But what only very few people are aware of is that long before sperm donation was practically or ethically possible, in the early 20th century, a secret sperm donation service existed for those women most in need.Helena Wright was a renowned doctor, bestselling author, campaigner and educator who overcame the establishment to pioneer contraceptive medicine in England and throughout the world. Kind, intelligent, funny and attractive, Helena had a way with words and a devoted set of friends. She adored men and spent her life helping women....
Source: The Tennessean
Aug 3, 2013
On May 26, 1925, The New York Times’ front page featured a story from Tennessee that would become one of the most famous court trials in our history.“John T. Scopes, young Dayton (Tenn.) high school teacher, tonight stands indicted for having taught the theory of evolution to students attending his science classes in violation of a law passed by the Tennessee Legislature and signed by the Governor on March 21, 1925. … The hearing of the case will bring many notables to the little mountain town, including William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow of Chicago and Dudley Field Malone of New York for the defense.”...
Source: ArtDaily
Aug 3, 2013
ORANGE, VA.- The Montpelier Foundation today announced findings from new archaeological excavations at the lifelong home of James Madison – Father of the Constitution, Architect of the Bill of Rights, and Fourth President of the United States. Discovered by teams of professional archaeology staff, students and visitors participating in special “Archaeology Expeditions,” two newly revealed subfloor pits provide an initial footprint for field slave quarters on the Montpelier landscape.“Montpelier is unique among archaeological sites in the United States with regards to our ability to recreate and visualize the experience of enslaved life,” said Matthew Reeves, Ph.D., Director of Archaeology and Landscape Restoration at James Madison’s Montpelier. “Because the fields have lain fallow since Madison’s time, the sites we are discovering are virtually undisturbed. We are meticulously documenting available evidence from the sites so we can begin to reconstruct the farm in a way that will authentically represent the complexity of life on the plantation.”...
